FAQ short
What is it? Magic Lantern is an enhancement atop of Canon's firmware that makes your 5D Mark II into the 5D Mark Free. It adds new features like onscreen audio meters and zebra stripes, as well as disables the audio AGC. It is an open (GPL) framework for developing extensions to the official software, tailored for film making needs. It does not replace the existing firmware, but instead runs along side of it. There is no need to "uninstall" it -- simply power cycle the camera to reboot to the stock Canon firmware. Where do I get it? You can download pre-build firmware files or the GPL licensed sources. This is still a beta version and there are some rough edges. Will it break my camera? As of September 2009 the software has been downloaded over two thousand times and there have been no reports of damage to the cameras. While this is no guarantee of absolute safety, the stable releases have been tested by beta testers. Most of the risk is to the developers' cameras while testing new features and probing new portions of Canon's firmware. By the time the software moves from development to beta testing it has been installed hundreds or thousands of times. What can I do to help? If you're a programmer skilled in ARM assembly, embedded systems, GUI programming and don't mind risking your expensive camera, join the Magic Lantern devel mailing list, edit the wiki and make improvements. Where do I report bugs? For general tech-support, post questions to dvinfo's 5D forum or cinema5d's firmware forum. For bugs and enhancement requests, use the issue tracker. Can I donate / pay for it? You can donate via PayPal. I'm also looking for a steadicam and interesting lenses, so if you have any older ones that are no longer being used please let me know. Or you can make a donation to the EFF for me. When will 24p be available? ]24p and 25p frame rates are very important for film makers and folks in PAL countries. Canon has finally released the video-related firmware (2.0.3 and a fixed 2.0.4) which adds or changes the following movie frame rates. NTSC: 1920×1080 : 30 fps (changed - actual 29.97 fps) 1920×1080 : 24 fps (added - actual 23.976 fps) 640×480 : 30 fps (changed - actual 29.97 fps) PAL: 1920×1080 : 25 fps (added - actual 25.0 fps) 1920×1080 : 24 fps (added - actual 23.976 fps) 640×480 : 25 fps (added - actual 25.0 fps) Why not just buy a video camera? If you can find a video camera that a) shoots HD, b) has a 50 mbps data rate, c) has interchangable lenses, d) has a 35 mm or larger sensor and e) costs less than $150k (without lenses, like the CineAlta F35), then buy that one instead. There are limitations to shooting movies on a 5D Mark II, notably the limited 12 minute recording time and lack of balanced audio inputs, but a ArriCam Lite only records 5 minutes of Super 35 and a high quality preamp like the juicedLink CX231 provides balanced inputs. The lack of auto-focus in movie mode isn't a problem either -- movies are focused manually with a follow-focus like the Cinevate Durus. Will it work on a 55D0/T2i? Work is in progress to support it and a short demo video of the audio meters has been posted. See this ml-devel thread for more details. Will it work on a 7D? Short answer: Not yet. But work is being done on producing a Magic Lantern image for the 7D. Currently we can generate signed firmware images and have dumped the 7D's ROM for analysis. If someone donates a 1D Mark IV, I suspect the same techniques will work to produce a version of Magic Lantern for it. While we can generate signed firmwares, we're not able to cause a clean reboot to start our process with the RAM copy of the ROM startup code. We can't even jump back into the ROM, so at this point we're not able to run our own process alongside the main firmware image. See 7D_support page. 500D work has started here to understand this entry level cameras under DryOS since this model. Will it work on a 40D, 50D, T1i, GH1, etc? Short answer: Maybe. Longer answer: It is likely that the 50D and T1i are close enough to the 5D Mark 2 that the same techniques can be applied to building similar firmware. The CHDK project successfully supports many different cameras running different operating systems, but finding the necessary kernel entry points is a very time consuming process. Since the 5D Mark Free software is publicly available, some one with the time, the hardware and the inclination to port it to the 50D can do so. The 40D is similar in hardware, but runs vxWorks and would be lots of effort to support The GH1 is a completely different bit of hardware and would require an entire from-scratch reverse engineering effort. Until Panasonic releases a firmware update it is unlikely that any such efforts can be begun and even then it would require someone with a camera, the inclination and the skills to work on it. However, there is an effort in reverse engineering the Pentax K10/GX10 and K20/GX20 cameras. As of August 2009 they have been able to decrypt the firmware update and are making progress in understanding how the camera works. See this message about the GH1. Firmware 1.2.4 warning Magic Lantern does not yet support Canon's 1.2.4 firmware. If you plan to use Magic Lantern, you will need to downgrade back to 1.1.0 using Canon's firmware image.